Posted
by
Soulskillon Friday November 25, 2011 @10:38AM
from the and-for-earthquakes dept.

New submitter Azmodan sends this excerpt from TorrentFreak:
"Ubisoft is known for laying the blame for many problems on the unauthorized downloading of its games. Stanislas Mettra, creative director of the upcoming game I Am Alive, confirms this once again by saying that the decision not to release a PC version is a direct result of widespread game piracy. However, those who look beyond the propaganda will see that there appears to be more to the story than that."
Another Ubisoft employee made similar comments about upcoming Ghost Recon games. Regarding Ghost Recon Online being free-to-play: "We are giving away most of the content for free because there’s no barrier to entry. To the users that are traditionally playing the game by getting it through Pirate Bay, we said, 'Okay, go ahead guys. This is what you’re asking for. We’ve listened to you – we’re giving you this experience. It’s easy to download, there’s no DRM that will pollute your experience.'" Regarding Future Soldier having no PC version: "When we started Ghost Recon Online we were thinking about Ghost Recon: Future Solider; having something ported in the classical way without any deep development, because we know that 95% of our consumers will pirate the game. So we said okay, we have to change our mind."

Ubisoft has gotten itself into such a complete knicker-twist over the PC games market via its groteseque DRM efforts that it wishes to give up on the whole affair as a bad job. But, like the classic stroppy teenager, it wishes to make clear to all and sundry that it's not being sent home in disgrace, it's making its own decision, for its own reasons, to take its ball and go home.

I am not an anti-DRM fundamentalist. I'm fine with the DRM requirements imposed by the base Steam DRM package, by Xbox Live, and with the exception of a few games (like Bionic Commando), by PSN. That's not to say I am in love with the idea of DRM or even accept it as inevitable. I like the concept behind GoG - particularly of extending it to newer games - and support them where I can. But I'm not going to boycott games over DRM on the basis of an abstract principle. I'm only going to do so where the DRM inconveniences me personally. And Ubisoft's always-on DRM system is the only one (leaving aside a few small EA experiments such as C&C4) to have passed that barrier. My connection tends to blip and reset itself every couple of days - losing 20 minutes of play-time because of it is not acceptable.

And because it's so offensive, I didn't limit the boycott to not just buying the games on the PC. I skipped the games across all platforms. No Assassin's Creed for me? It's a bit of a pity, but I'll live. I mean, really, I'm not the kind of gamer it's a fantastic idea to be upsetting. I buy 30+ games per year (as you can see from the end-of-year roundups I do in my journal). The last game I pirated was the original Crimson Skies, back in 2000 (and I went on to buy that a month or two later). I always buy new, not second hand, except on the odd occasion when I hear about an old game that I "missed" at release which really appeals to me, and which I can't find new). I'm not sat there moaning about the lack of Linux ports and boycotting anything that has even a sniff of a CD-key. I want to be reasonable.

The Mettra comments appear to be based on faulty data on PC game sales. They're going only on boxed-copy sales, which have been declining on PC for a decade or more now. What isn't declining are download sales, primarily through Steam but also through a variety of other sources. Even going off simultaneous players-online stats (which will substantially under-estimate actual copies sold), the PC version of Skyrim shifted some pretty epic numbers via Steam.

It's a slight pity in this case. I Am Alive looks fairly interesting and it's pitched at a price point that tends to fare reasonably well on the PC. But can I live without it? Sure...

Besides, as we drift to the end of this console cycle, the PC is not the only platform with a piracy problem. Ok, the PS3 has always remained difficult from a piracy perspective. And the 360, while easily hackable, does carry a very high risk of getting an XBL ban. But the Wii, DS, 3DS(?) and PSP are all pretty much wide open these days (and have been for a while in some cases).

PS. This story has been carried across multiple mainstream gaming media outlets over the last few days - Kotaku, Eurogamer, IGN, 1up etc. Could we try to get a link in TFA that is to a site that won't be blocked by most common workplace filters (ie. not TorrentFreak)?

And the 360, while easily hackable, does carry a very high risk of getting an XBL ban.

In all honesty, all the people I know with modded 360's don't connect them to Xbox Live. Many of them actually have two consoles: the one they bought originally that got the RRoD or disc tray errors that, due to being out of warranty anyway, they had repaired and modded at the same time...and the regular one they had to buy to replace it with so they could play on XBL.

Not speaking for everyone, obviously, but it seems silly to even bother trying to play a modded 360 on XBL. Everyone I know that's tried had their accounts banned pretty quickly years ago, hence nobody even really tried anymore. In my experiences, anyway.

That mirrors the experience in my circle of acquaintances. It's like it's accepted that if someone's going to run a hacked Xbox, then no online is part of the price one pays to do that. And many of them do have 2 Xboxes. I actually got a sweet deal on some Xbox 360 hardware a couple of years ago because of the Xbox live ban thing. I wanted to buy a couple of extra controllers and another Rock Band guitar for my 360 and I see some guy who was selling his 360 on Craigslist with a full set of rock band ins

"Ubisoft has gotten itself into such a complete knicker-twist over the PC games market via its groteseque DRM efforts that it wishes to give up on the whole affair as a bad job. But, like the classic stroppy teenager, it wishes to make clear to all and sundry that it's not being sent home in disgrace, it's making its own decision, for its own reasons, to take its ball and go home."

and that's the reason I don't purchase Ubisoft games. Period.

Their DRM has more than once caused my computer to freak out and force me to reinstall everything over again. I did purchase one years ago and I traced it back to their DRM solution. I gave up and today won't purchase any of their games. If one is a gift I go back to the store and with an unopened product replace it with something else (or just get the refund or credit).

In other words: "I'm fine getting screwed in the ass when the stuff I paid for no longer plays, just so I can appear reasonable to paranoid and greedy corporations."

Have fun in 20 years in your DRM future, when everything is under lock and key. Hell, with android's face recognition, it won't be long before you're the only one who can read the article in the magazines/newspapers you subscribe to and if you hand it to someone else the screen will go blank.

Hell, with android's face recognition, it won't be long before you're the only one who can read the article in the magazines/newspapers you subscribe to and if you hand it to someone else the screen will go blank.

Damn right. I read an article a year or so ago (that I can't seem to find now, unfortunately) about patents for ways to use face tracking to ensure you were actually watching the ads being served on your device; if you weren't giving it your full attention, the ad paused until you did. It's not bad enough we have to sit through ads anywhere and everywhere anymore, now we'l have no choice but to watch the things...

I think Ubisoft's problems are numerous but the two that spring to mind are a) they don't produce many good games and people know it, and b) PC gamers are averse to DRM at the best of times and inflicting a DRM which needs internet access is plain stupid.

The stupid part is the PC represents money for old rope. They already have probably 95% of the code and 99% of the assets required to make a PC port from the 360 & PS3 versions so it doesn't make any sense to ignore the market. Port the game, throw it

I'd just add that as a repairman and retailer i've seen first hand how the horrible DRM that Ubisoft puts in its games can break the system which puts them in the "Not a fucking chance" column myself. of course the pirate game has NO DRM which means it won't screw your system, yet another case of the pirates offering a BETTER product, not because of price, but because the DRM screws legit customers.

You see one of the nasty things they don't tell you is NONE of the DRM schemas support each others tech, so if

Same here. I've been burned way too many times buying full-priced games at launch that ended up being buggy pieces of crap or just pieces of crap entirely. There are few developers out there that I trust to release consistently good games. I always test drive before I buy.

The harder they make it for me to do so, the less inclined I am to buy their game.

Steam's been around since... what... 2004? Its DRM requirements have not gotten any more restrictive over that span. In fact, the "play offline" feature works much better and more consistently than it used to, so if anything it's become less restrictive.

Lol so true in so many ways. Though, lately, I get all my games via Steam because either my wife or I see a game package for sale and it goes something like this:"Baby they have the entire X Series for $15, I am getting it""Oooh get it for me too""ok"

The last game I "pirated" was one that I had purchased a copy of, but used some silly DRM and.... lo and behold... the company went out of business. Luckily someone released a DRM-free full version for download (JFK Reloaded btw).

I think thats part of it right there...I can afford games. So I buy them usually. Wasn't there a study a while back that found.... people who can afford to buy things do, and only people who can't really afford them pirate? Hmmm... so that 95%, who as you say probably only play for an hour (I think thats true of most players with most games...theres tons of games I played for a short time and never returned to)? Most of them probably couldn't afford to buy lots of games anyway....

so thats 95% loss of.... um... what? The vast majority of them were never going to buy it in the first place.

Just be honest and say that the console players will put up with worse games and more expensive games.

It makes sense if you think about it. I mean, how many parents go out and buy console games for their kids without really knowing a damn thing about the game itself? I know when I was a kid back in the NES and SNES eras I used to get shitty games all the time; the givers meant well, and I was always gracious, but obviously all they had to go on for a gift for me was "He has a Super Nintendo, therefore, any game is a good gift."

It stands to reason that a ton of parents do the same for their kids with the Xbox 360 today. Plus, most of the places I've been in that sell games have had either clueless employees or people that will tell you a piece of crap isn't a piece of crap just to get it out of their inventory.

I had to crack almost every Splinter Cell game because their DRM measures essentially "locked" my disc drives entirely when installed, regardless of whether the game was running or not. On my PCs and laptops.

And this was AN INTENDED EFFECT.These guys are off their rockers. They make Capcom's business decisions look wise.

if that's the case, the question I have is why? 95% of computer users do not have the skills needed to pirate a video game. You have to download and install bit torrent, go to one of the sites, wade though the viruses and dead files, download & burn the game, install the game, open and read the install how to (which often has to be opened manually in a text editor), and follow the instructions.

Someone who can do all that is a very advanced computer users (don't laugh, I'm talking about the aggregate whole of all users). Assuming that Ubisoft's figures are correct, the only people left playing PC games are highly advanced users. If we assume this is true, then I want to ask why. Two possibilities are:

1. The technical barrier to entry for PC gaming is too high. If we assume that to play PC games you need to install a new graphics card (not an unreasonable assumption: most games come with an Intel Graphics adapter that can barely run WoW) then this could be true.

2. All non-Technical PC gamers have jumped ship to consoles or MMORPGs (the WoW effect).

Regarding # 1, there are still millions of PCs being sold with entry level ATI & nVidia graphics, which is more than enough to play games. That wasn't true 10 years ago, but the state of PC graphics has been stalled by console porting. Regarding # 2, well, there's something to that. But I would argue it's the job of Ubisoft's PC marketing team to make these people want to play games, and they're not doing a very good job. Note that I'm not talking about the game studios themselves, but the marketers. The key to marketing is to make people want to do something they didn't want to do before. Not necessarily something they'd never do, but something they would be disposed to doing given the proper message / incentives.

I guess what it sounds like to me is this: Ubisoft is just throwing up their hands and giving up.

Actually, Skyrim's UI suffers from that same "we designed it for a console controller rather than a sane HID" that seems to plague damn near all games nowadays. If I realized that Bethesda was going to follow suit, I probably would have bought the Xbox version myself.

I agree with what you're saying for the most part, except for this:

I know some people will argue with me and say "Well, Steam doesn't release their stats" and that sort of argument, but it doesn't matter- the reality is that these companies have deemed developing for PCs to be not financially worthwhile however you try and spin it, and getting mad at them wont help.

You start off very well by comparing numbers as if they mean something, and then when you admit that we don't know Steam's numbers, you try to state that the numbers don't

The big one is something another posted pointed out: Those are retail only sales. A lot of people on PC buy their games via digital download these days. Just ask Gabe Newell about that, he has gotten exceedingly rich off of that, and Steam isn't the only DD service. In particular, Skyrim probably sold a ton digital since it is a Steamworks game (meaning it needs Steam to play). Might as well get it on Steam, since that's what the retail copy uses anyhow. Skyrim peaked at more than 300,000 people playing it AT ONE TIME on Steam, so I'm going to guess more than 500k copies for the PC sold.

The other is that total numbers don't matter, it only matters that you make enough to justify the cost. After all if we went by your metric of "total numbers after 1 week of sales" then there should be no Skyrim for PS3. The 260 sold twice as many copies, so that should be the only platform right?

Nope, all that matters is you make enough to make it worth your while. So, presume PCs only did sell 500k copies. A standard retail markup is about 100%. It might be less for software, I don't know, but we'll assume 100% markup. That means Bethesda made $15 million on Skyrim for the PC so far. So long as their porting costs were a non-trivial amount below that amount, it was worth doing. If they spent $5 million on the PC version (which is unlikely it was most likely much less) then that is $10 million they walked away with already.

Then there's the fact that, no, PC are NOT more expensive to develop for. One big reason is licensing fees. Consoles take a cut, a non-trivial one, of every game you sell for licensing fees. It is how the companies make money. So $5-10 of every single copy sold goes to MS or Sony for the console versions. No such issue on the PC. You keep 100% of the profits.

Also porting from the PC to the 360 is quite easy. MS has seen to that. It isn't quite as simple as clicking "cross compile" but close. MS wants games on both platforms, and they make the tools to do it. The tools are also the same (Visual Studio) in both cases.

A more minor fact, but still one that matters too, is that digital distributors charge less than retail stores. Their markup is more like 25-30%. So for all the copies you sell there, you get even more money per sale.

This idea that the PC just isn't worth it is silly, and not backed up by reality. If it weren't, the why the hell are there so many PC games? Go to Metacritic and ask it for a list of releases for the PC. Have a look at the massive list in recent months. You think companies would keep doing it if there was no profit in it?

This is Ubisoft whining. Even they still do not just PC releases, but PC exclusives. They just released Anno 2070, a PC only strategy game. There is no console version, nor is there one planned (not the kind of game that would play well with a controller). Again, you think they'd do that if there was no money?

Just playing devil's advocate here:
If they do release the game, and finish it (since from TFS it sounds like they just abandoned the project), they would have paid extra to get it finished, only to have it pirated. Sure, if they've already done the game, it's ridiculous not to release it for this reason, but if it's not finished yet I could see them saying "well it's only going to get pirated anyway, and we probably won't recoup what we've spent, might as well not spend any more"

For delaying the cracks for better games.How's a guy supposed to pirate and play the latest GoodPCGame_X if all of the crackers and scene releases are busy spending their time mocking Ubisoft with pre-release cracks?

Easily the most terrifying and effective of anti-piracy measures: Flooding the pros with entertaining shit to do.

Yet somehow in this environment full of pirates, Call of Duty manages to make a billion dollars, Skyrim manages to make over 450 million dollars, etc. Ubisoft is full of shit and their games stopped being good a long time ago. Come to think of it no, SSI was good. But who the hell is Ubisoft? Ahh yes, they wanted to become another EA studio-devouring machine. Well the experiment has failed.

CoD is mainly a multiplayer game that requires authentication, you can pirate the single player experience but that's less than half of the game, and Skyrim is Skyrim, hyped for 3 years on top of the 3 years of Oblivion hype. Should Ubisoft either move into the multiplayer market, or put all their efforts into marketing its single most popular title like Bethesda? Not saying the rest of your post is wrong, but those examples aren't the best.

hypedThe hype came from Oblivion being a good game, TES being a good series and some good and not-totally-lying marketing.

The example is a great one. Bethesda delivered good game after good game and gave the series a reputation.Thus, that allowed greater initial sales. "That:" being "making a good bloody game."

Of course, there's also the fact that they aren't complete assholes and actually encourage interaction and fostering growth with their PC userbase.

Which Ubisoft does not do. They hate PC gamers, especially the ones that buy their games; unless they are grossly incompetent, they are actively spiting their paying customers because they know that a given DRM implementation will not do anything but fuck over legitimate consumers.

Ya you have to consider the fact that years and years after releasing Morrowind the modding community for it is still alive. Oblivion's modding community is also still alive, and the Skyrim modding community is waiting to blow up.

Hell I own an actual physical disk of Morrowind, but it came up the other day on Steam for like 10 bucks and I still bought it just because steam's install process is much easier and I don't generally like having to dig through my CD collection any time I want to play Morrowind.

You're absolutely correct, which is why Bethesda is one of the few game companies that openly embraces modding to the extent that they do. Bethesda understands that modding is only a good thing that extends sales far beyond what's considered normal.

They're just another greedy business. The only reason they bother making a good game is to bilk you out of your money.

To be fair, actually working to earn that money by creating something of value to exchange for it isn't terribly greedy.

Usually "greed" wants to short-circuit this process and get something for little or nothing, or use anti-competitive tactics, or vendor lock-in to escape competing on merit, or abuse the political system to get laws written in its favor.

If you think Bethesda honestly created a great game that is worth what they charge and you buy it, they deserve and have earned the money they made.

If you think Bethesda honestly created a great game that is worth what they charge and you buy it, they deserve and have earned the money they made.

Yes I do. Skyrim is fun. It's not without its problems, but it's fun and it's beautiful and it's a great pass-time. I bought Silent Hunter 3 from Ubisoft and it was a buggy piece of shit. I bought Silent Hunter 4 hoping for improvement. They made it worse. I tried Silent Hunter 5 without buying it and was convinced I would never give Ubisoft another penny.

You work at Ubisoft or something? OK whatever. The point is OTHER game companies manage to make money - even Paradox Interactive, which is notorious for shipping buggy, unfinished pieces of crap. Ubisoft has simply forgotten what it's all about. The board should pay themselves big fat bonuses and just dissolve the company.

Yeah, I think it's pretty clear gamers aren't buying Ubisoft's PC games... I wouldn't either, who knows what crap they'll bundle with their next game. Really, really horrible DRM is a piracy driver, not a sales driver. Most people are lazy and uninformed and will buy that shit the first time, but then you've pissed on all your sales after that. They're just too dense so understand the pool of piss they're in is of their own making.

I skipped Assassin's Creed 2 because of the DRM. I didn't pirate it, just didn't play it. I don't lack for good games to play (I have a backlog of games, damn Steam sales) and I wasn't going to put up with always on DRM so I gave it a miss.

Looking to be the same thing for Anno 2070. Sounds like it is really well done and I like the Anno series but it uses a TAGES 3 machine activation deal. Well I'm not ok with that. Not that I want it on more than 3 computers, but that it only gives you 3 installs total, with no revocation. I'd eat that up easy, as I reinstall my system a minimum of each new Windows version, and usually more often because of new hardware.

So I'll probably have to give it a miss too. Too bad, I would have liked to play it but if they want to be dicks there is no lack of other companies that aren't who are waiting to take my money. Never mind the games I have a backlog of now (meaning I own but haven't yet played) I have a list of 10 other games I'd really like to get, but haven't because I have this backlog to play.

Maybe you could give people an incentive to actually buy a PC game? First step would be to stop releasing broken-ass console ports to the PC market, I bet that would help sales a lot. Also, get rid of any additional software to run, i.e., Steam and the other ridiculous spyware crap that is bundled with so many PC games today.

Maybe you could give people an incentive to actually buy a PC game? First step would be to stop releasing broken-ass console ports to the PC market, I bet that would help sales a lot. Also, get rid of any additional software to run, i.e., Steam and the other ridiculous spyware crap that is bundled with so many PC games today.

"Ohhh... This games looks cool. Reviews are good. Wait a minute. It is Ubisoft. I better check to see if it is buggy crap like the last 20 games they released.... Yep. Ohhh... THIS game looks cool..."

Maybe you could give people an incentive to actually buy a PC game? First step would be to stop releasing broken-ass console ports to the PC market, I bet that would help sales a lot. Also, get rid of any additional software to run, i.e., Steam and the other ridiculous spyware crap that is bundled with so many PC games today.

Funny that you mention steam. Because me (and more people like me) see steam as "DRM done right", instead of locking down the game so it becomes unplayable, steam has added value. No more hassle with keys. Download it everywhere. Easy access to forums with problem solutions. Integrated friends/join game functions (making playing with friends easy). Lots of discounts, and many indie games.

Because me (and more people like me) see steam as "DRM done right", instead of locking down the game so it becomes unplayable, steam has added value.

That's all well and good; I know plenty of people that feel the same way about iTunes, but it should be up to the consumer to decide if they want to use that software. Many games are coming out nowadays requiring Steam, games that don't even have an online component at all require it.

Besides, what happens when Steam goes offline? Millions upon millions of copies of games out there are going to turn into coasters or useless bits on a hard drive, and all because some far flung authentication server went offline. Certainly doesn't leave me with too many warm and fuzzy feelings...

Notwithstanding how hypothetical it is to ask when Steam will go offline (this is after all the biggest digital distribution service on the PC by a very, very large margin), I would be extremely surprised that Valve hasn't already planned something for this kind of thing. They take it rather seriously (surely more than Sony anyways).

I'll add one thing: I much prefer to have Steam DRM than any other form of DRM. I don't trust EA to keep their activation servers online for more than a year or two, but Steam w

Well, VALVe has no obligation to keep their servers or software alive. If at any point they get into trouble, they'll be more than happy to pull the plug for some quick quarterly revenue. Even large companies like Microsoft pull their original Xbox online platform, EA regularly pulls down the servers for 3 year old games. Walmart and Microsoft (again) have pulled the plug on their music stores. VALVe won't do it now but I wouldn't trust them not to do it within a couple of years.

The fact that many games (including this one) does not sell well among PC gamers is no secret. I don't like Ubisoft because they do lots of bad ports and put very aggressive DRM on some of their games, but right now I can't blame them for being realistic.
This is no WoW, no StarCraft, no Minecraft, its one of those games that can sell tons on consoles but almost nothing on PCs. It's not like this is something new, the data is there, it's not an opinion. They know it isn't going to sell well in the PC platform and I don't think you can blame them for not throwing money at a risky move right away.

They are mistaking their goals. They think their goal should be to prevent piracy. It isn't, they shouldn't care. Their goal is to maximize sales. While those could potentially be related, you go about things differently. You don't do things that reduce piracy, but also reduce legit customers.

Think of it like a retail store:

Retail stores want to reduce shrinkage (shoplifting) because it costs them money. Unlike piracy it costs real money too, not just potential sales, they lose the value of the goods stolen

Also, their statements are based entirely off of B&M sales, and not digital sales.So if they want to say "the market isn't there", they should say "the walmart and gamestop market isn't there" and stop being disingenuous.

But that's their biggest market for clueless consumers that don't know the game they're buying is a piece of shit! What are they supposed to do, make good games? Don't you know how expensive that is???

Yup, it's only yesterday I was reading this piece about an interview with Gabe Newell [gamingbolt.com]..."Our goal is to create greater service value than pirates, and this has been successful enough for us that piracy is basically a non-issue for our company"...

This is the same tack that Crunchy Roll took with anime. Subtitled anime piracy has slowed down a good bit, because people will willingly watch streaming high quality subs that are immediately available legally on Crunchy Roll, and not download them because they only wanted to watch the episode once. Crunchy Roll actually brokered a deal with animation studios to acquire the episode a week ahead of time and churn out a good, quality fansub in that period. Most fans will happily watch a short ad (hell, so

so Ubi calls the vast majorty of us pc gamers THIEVES and then they expect us (the non pirate ones) to support them? wow! now that's the most weird customer loyalty tactic I have ever seen. reverse psychology perhaps?

"How it stacks up" doesn't matter.If a game makes $10 million on its first initial PC release, then the sequel makes $50 million on consoles and $10 million on PC with a similar budget, then they have no excuse to bog down/abandon Sequel 2. Yes, it's not *as* profitable as the console games, but it's still as profitable as it was in the first place, if not more.

Instead, they cut off a foot to spite their backpack. It's just nonsensical.

I guess BF3 should have sold 100 million copies and MW should have sold 200 million copies? Oh, those are multiplayer games you say? Skyrim should have sold 68 million copies then?( Note: these are launch day sales )

How about you make a great game, price is appropriately and it will sell itself.

Besides, looking at myself, I've stopped pirating when I grew older and started earning some real money. I still won't buy Skyrim for €50, but I've grown so old I don't care anymore that I don't get to play the latest and greatest. I'll buy it once it reaches the price I want to pay for it. You are complaining that your cash strapped audience isn't spending it's money on you, fine, having them spend it in smaller amounts might work it might not. It still doesn't disqualify the old (and my preferred) way of selling a game.

See ya Ubi, won't be missing you. Your games are really nothing special anymore and your insistence on requiring your own DRM service ON TOP OF STEAM is just ridiculous. I won't log in twice and maintain separate accounts for you anymore. Likewise, I won't have to lose access to my games when not online (something that Steam is frequently accused of, but MOST games can be played offline on Steam after the initial download and activation).

You look at a PC market where other companies are making millions in SALES and blame piracy for your woes. I haven't bought an Ubi game since the last Splinter Cell, I must be pirating your crap now right? Wrong, I'm just spending my money on games from other publishers. Take your ball and go home, I didn't even know you had a ball anymore.

Ubisoft is a terrible company, most of their games are bugged mess with monstruous DRM that no one on their right minds would ever pay for them: do you really think you're losing money because people pirate your games? Do you even think these people would even buy them if they couldn't pirate them? Take the last HOMM game, for example: a terrible, dumbed down version of a once great series: frankly, the only way peple are going to play that is pirating them. How come Skyrim, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Crysis and other AAA titles on the PC still manage to sell? Because they are *good* games. Stop trying to make yourself look good: The Wii must be the most pirated platform of all time, yet it's by far the most succesfull one in terms of money. You're just being thick now.

Wasn't Ubi's absurd DRM supposed to fix this piracy thing? I guess it didn't work, and rather then admit that it drove all the paying customers away instead they want to say that somehow it failed and everybody pirated everything.

News flash - Your DRM sucks. I still haven't bought Settlers 7 because of it, and I likely never will. Another game got that money instead.

But I guess there's too many MBAs working there to figure out something so simple.

The thing is... pirates are not your customers, are a pool of people that may or may not buy your stuff, but your market is the people that buy games. This is obvious for a lot of people now, and for some of then, is a way to make a lot of money. Valve is swimming of money because understand this. Ubisoft is full of retards that can't understand this.

If 95% of their customers are pirating the game, something is very, very wrong with their marketing. Pirating games isn't as easy as that for a regular user. The question I have then is: is there anyone playing games on PC that isn't an advanced user? It's true that most PCs come with Intel Graphics, which won't play these games. Someone that can install a graphics card can probably pirate a game. But that said there are plenty of gaming rigs for under $400 (which isn't much more than a game console these d

I'm not even kidding. Their installers are buggy, their ports are quite shoddy and their DRM implementations are outright broken and subject to frequent failure. On top of that, their support and their forums are counter-productive and often silence large swaths of consumers that complain when NewGameX isn't working at all. It's easier to torrent a game, install it with 2 clicks, then just *play*.

Agree 100%. When the pirated experience is 100 times better than the legitimate one, who's fault is that?

Back in the day, before the PC developers got greedy and wanted to milk every possible revenue stream, they used to encourage modders to add content to their games. Many bugs were fixed with patches developed for free by fans in the gaming community. Then they realized that allowing people to create their own new content was cutting off their revenue stream to create their own new content, but even th

I bet if someone could go buy the game for $5 it wouldn't be worth the trouble to wait for a big ass download. They would just go buy it. Making millions of dollars on top of millions of dollars on top of millions of dollars on every game isn't possible. Buying a game for $60+, jumping through DRM hoops to get it installed, having to drag out DVD's to play it, and the game turning out to suck isn't sufficient incentive to buy games. Even if the game was the be all to end all it isn't worth it to kids wh

Not to Ubisoft, though. I don't know the last time I bought an Ubisoft title. Quite frankly, none of their games are all that interesting, and I'm not taking my chances with their DRM, either. I've got all of this generation's consoles, but really, if you're going to fuck with one platform, you kind of fucked with me regardless. Real smooth, Ubisoft.

Anyway, I kind of knew that Ubisoft's DRM scheme was all for the purpose of pushing to console-only development. I guess they'll save money by remov

It's a strategy that's caught on with a few developers. Management wants to stick to console games and abandon PC altogether, but they need to justify it to management. So they release a shitty version or shitty ports or bog it down with shitty DRM and then do some pompous release-study that they can use to say "See? PC is a dying and unprofitable platform!"

How about:- stop doing remakes of Doom/Quake/Unreal. A first-person shooter is a first-person shooter. Yes you can change the maps, the guns, the enemies and the plot all you want but at the end of the day it's all the same game.- stop adding too much complexity and stop porting games from consoles without thinking about the controls. Don't tell me to press "Yellow button X" or "Triangle" when I'm on a computer. I'm using a keyboard and a mouse here, not a damn Xbox gamepad. Also, no option to invert the Y

It's all the pirates fault, and has nothing to do with buggy games and utterly obnoxious DRM.

I refuse to buy Ubisoft stuff because I refuse to jump through their nonsensical hoops. Meanwhile, I've spent more money on Steam than I have my entire life before. The prices are far more reasonable, they back up my game data, and if I switch platforms I don't have to re-buy the game again. The value I get out of steam is absolutely immense.

Now say it with me:You give me value, I give you money.If you give me what only you perceive to be value, along with a ginormous stick to whack me over the head with, I give you my middle finger.

Ubisoft is the company known for the worst DRM in the world. I've had so many of their games become virtually unplayable due to the DRM. I refuse to buy any of their games any more, period. They can blame piracy all they want, but the fact is, I know a lot of people that are now intentionally boycotting their products.

In order to "recover" from their image, they kept touting this game or that game that are shipped DRM free -- frankly, we don't care. We've been screwed by you guys far, far too often to trust

Um, no. This seems to be a common meme on slashdot, but it has very little to do with reality. While the increased number of possible graphics cards/hardware configs of PCs are a problem, the cost of supporting them is dwarfed by the license costs for consoles. Anyone can release a game on Windows/OS X and not pay Microsoft or Apple a dime, but you cannot release a game on a console without giving Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo a cut of your revenue. Long story short companies that don't release games for the PC aren't doing so because they simply don't think it will sell for whatever reasons. If companies thought they could sell as many copies of a game released only on the PC as they could console games you bet they would release more for the PC even if it requires spending a little bit more on doing QA.

You're not actually wrong as such, but there's a bit more complexity here than your post acknowledges.

There are indeed licensing costs associated with the consoles. However, these are habitually passed directly on to the consumer. In the UK, for example, the console-manufacturer's slice on a newly released game tends to be Â£10. This is why a new PC game in the UK will retail for Â£30, while the same game, released for the consoles in the same week, will be on sale at Â£40.

Well in the US the price of the games are usually the same, but there is a difference that your post helped me to realize, the costs with licensing are based on how many copies you sell, however the extra costs associated with PCs are sunk by the time the game is released, whether it sells well or not.

If companies thought they could sell as many copies of a game released only on the PC as they could console games you bet they would release more for the PC even if it requires spending a little bit more on doing QA.

I think it's more that the companies know that they can't sell ridiculous reskins for $2 a pop to the PC market.

This is why the major developers love the console market. [cracked.com] Also why they're starting to move to the Facebook and mobile game markets. They want to cash in on the millions of people that say "Eh, $2 isn't that much." Next thing you know they've sunk $100 into new buildings for their farm.

After I bought the bundle, I sat and watched the sales counter, and the total raised counter, tick past for a while. I couldn't get over the number of assholes who were literally paying a single lousy US cent for the bundle. I think they were in the majority. Heavens knows how they got the average price figures they did - there must be a lot of people who pay way over the odds.

I would even believe that processing transactions like that costs more than the money

While it may not be specified, a large part of their conclusions should (but probably aren't; they're lairs, after all) be based off of the asset worth of programmers/developers, who are worth more working on "new" projects.

That is to say, a shelf in a grocery store holding items with a $1 profit IS profitable, but it's "unprofitable" compared to if it was holding items with a $2 profit.

When they truly become unprofitable, not the pseudo-unprofitable the industries are trying to claim right now. if they're losing money at every turn according their FUD, and have been for years, how exactly are they still around? Oh that's right, they are in fact quite profitable, and will remain so, but the CE* types raking in millions might have to take a pay cut, or worse just not exist in some companies (Indys go go good team) And that my friends is what this is really all about. Fat cats making gobs of